


Companion

by yet_intrepid



Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Corneille, Gen, Literary Reference
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-16
Updated: 2013-01-16
Packaged: 2017-11-25 17:18:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/641251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yet_intrepid/pseuds/yet_intrepid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bossuet finds himself homeless again, and worries that this may be an inopportune time for him to invade Joly's flat. Joly finds such worries ridiculous. Features a quote from Corneille.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Companion

_The manner of giving is worth more than the gift. –Corneille._

Bossuet sighed as he halted before Joly’s door, shifting his bags about so that he’d have a free hand to knock. Not that he had to knock coming to Joly’s, but simply walking in with his things didn’t feel quite right. He rapped twice, and heard Joly’s voice call out, a little frantic: “Just a moment!”

Joly pulled open the door shortly, standing on one shod foot and holding a bare one a bit in the air. On seeing Bossuet, he looked relieved. “Ah, it’s you, Aigle. No need to knock, you know. Come in.”

He did, trailing his bags along with him as Joly hopped over to an armchair to put his sock back on. “…I got evicted again.”

“You came to the right place.”

“It’s your birthday.” 

“So I am doubly glad to see you.” He looked up from pulling on his shoe, his voice quiet. “Musichetta moved out, Lesgles.”

Bossuet swallowed. “Good Lord. I knew you were falling out, but I didn’t know it was that bad.”

Joly nodded. “We’re still speaking, but the flat’s been empty. I hate living by myself; some sort of companionship is absolutely required and yours will be ideal.”

“Well, I’m here,” he laughed, dropping his bags on the floor. “I had a birthday present for you, but it broke—I knocked it over when my landlady came in to tell me that I was going to have to leave within the hour. Besides, I don’t know if you’d want it at the moment.”

Joly lifted his eyebrows. “Why wouldn’t I? Let me see—I don’t care if it broke.”

Bossuet rummaged in a satchel. “It’s just…you always said Musichetta had eyes like a fortune-teller. So when I saw this, I thought—”

He held out a little figurine of a beautiful young fortune-teller examining the palm of a young gentleman, whose other arm was missing. Joly took it as Bossuet awkwardly held the broken-off porcelain arm.

Joly’s fingers traced the fortune-teller’s face. “She’s lovely. I—I don’t object to keeping her…Musichetta and I always come round in the end, after all. I shan’t mope just because there’s a reminder.”

Glancing at the detached arm with a half-laugh, Bossuet handed it over to Joly. “As much a reminder of your studies—I think he’s had an amputation.”

Joly chuckled. “Do you suppose it was gangrene? A crushed bone?”

“I think the doctor wasn’t qualified,” he responded. “It was hardly a necessary procedure, after all…Joly, I wish I were not presenting you with such a poor gift.”

“Poor!” cried Joly. “Bossuet, you are impossible. What is that bit from the playwright, the one Jehan likes? ‘The manner of giving is worth more than the gift.’ And your figurine might have had an unnecessary amputation, but you are here when I am lonely and you are going to stay as long as you need to, as long as you want. You are my companion and my _friend_ and if you ever call _that_ a poor gift, so help me! I will—”

And setting the figurine down on the armchair, he sprang up to silence the rest of Bossuet’s protests in an embrace.

Bossuet laughed and hugged him close and did not say thank you because it was unnecessary and then promptly trod upon Joly’s stockinged foot.

“Ouch!” Joly protested, falling back towards the armchair and only barely managing not to land on the figurine. He rubbed at his foot.

Bossuet mixed a sigh and a smile. “Sorry,” he said. “…why are you wearing one shoe, anyway?”

“I was examining my foot,” Joly said, taking his sock off to do so again. “There is a dreadful fungus beneath my little toe…”

And as he sat back in an armchair of his own and listened to Joly talk of the dangers of fungi, Bossuet knew that he was home.


End file.
